May 2024, Club Meeting Notes
Our club are sorry to report the unexpected passing of Ken Knight, who was our president for many years. Ken was a stamp dealer and a specialist in Egyptian postal history. He will be deeply missed by all of us.
Our member Pete Best presented a talk on Maltese stamps. Its location in the Eastern Mediterranean made it a crossroads in philatelic seaborne traffic between Europe Africa and the Middle East. This unique position created a complexity of postage rates not helped by the many forwarding agents involved in seaborne traffic.
In bound ships to Malta when illness was detected had to be completely quarantined for 91 days between Valletta and the small outlying Bishops Island, which housed an isolation hospital at the harbours entrance. The quarantined postal items were perforated to allow a disinfection agent to permeate the contents.
Early adhesive stamps were printed with fugitive ink. Consequently it is difficult to identify shade variations due to running colours. Peter completed his talk by showing many types of Maltese post cards, letters , registered letters and newspaper wrappers.
New members are always welcome at our meetings which are held at the Rochdale Unitarian Church on the second Tuesday of each month at 7.30 pm.